The Rag-Picker's Guide to Poetry: Poems, Poets, Process

Same Bird: New Song

208 Ellen Bryant Voigt Same Bird: New Song gRouNdhog not unlike otters which we love frolicking floating on their backs like truant boys unwrapping lunch same sleek brown pelt some overtones of gray and rust though groundhogs have no swimming hole and lunch is rooted in the ground beneath short legs small feet like a fat man’s odd diminutive loafers not frolicking but scurrying layers of fat his coat gleams as though wet shines chestnut sable darker head and muzzle lower into the grass a dark triangular face like the hog-nosed skunk another delicate nose and not a snout doesn’t it matter what they’re called I like swine which are smart and prefer to be clean using their snouts to push their excrement to the side of the pen but they have hairy skin not fur his fur shimmers and ripples he never uproots the mother plant his teeth I think are blunt squared off like a sheep’s if cornered does he cower like sheep or bite like a sow with a litter is he ever attacked he looks to me inedible he shares his acreage with moles voles ravenous crows someone thought up the names his other name is botched Algonquin but yes he burrows beneath the barn where once a farmer Same Bird: New Song 209 dried cordwood he scuttles there at speech cough laugh at lawnmower swollen brook high wind he lifts his head as Gandhi did small tilt to the side or stands erect like a prairie dog or a circus dog but dogs don’t waddle like Mao with a tiny tail he seems asexual like Gandhi like Jesus if Jesus came back would he be vegetarian also pinko freako homo in Vermont natives scornful of greyhounds from the city self-appoint themselves woodchucks unkempt hairy macho who would shoot on sight an actual fatso shy mild marmot radiant as the hog-nosed skunk in the squirrel trap both cleaner than sheep fur fluffy like a girl’s maybe he is a she it matters what we’re called words shape the thought don’t say rodent and ruin everything coW end of the day daylight subsiding into the trees lights coming on in the milking barns as somewhere out in the yard some ants are tucking in their aphids for the night behind hydrangea leaves or in their stanchions underground they have been bred for it the smaller brain serving the larger brain the cows eat so we will eat we guarantee digestion is the only work they do heads down tails up they won’t have sex they get some grain some salt no catamounts no wolves we give them names we fertilize the fields we put up bales of hay last week one breached the fence the neighbors stopped to shoo it back a girl held out a handful of grass calling the cow as you would a dog no dice so what if she recoiled to see me burst from the house with an axe I held it by the blade I tapped with the handle where the steaks come from like the one I serve my friend a water sign who likes to lurk in the plural solitude of Zen retreat to calm his mind but when it’s done 210 The RAg-PIckeR’S guIde To PoeTRy what he needs I think is something truly free of mind a slab of earth by way of cow by way of fire the surface charred the juices running pink and red on the white plate houNd since thought is prayer if hard and true I thought that thought could lead me to compassion for my fellow creatures insects not included contrary to the Buddha I swat them dead the wasps might show a little compassion too I do include the hound next door it moans all day all night a loud slow lament a child can make itself sustain to dramatize its misery this dog repeats repeats he was the neighbors’ child but now they have an actual child he’s been cast down to be a dog again chained outdoors heartsick uncomprehending why can’t he just buck up remember his roots his lot not more special than any other sad hound look up at the fledglings’ wide mouths look over here at the cat teaching her litter how to hunt all sleek...